This website is no longer updated and is now an archive only. Alec Finlay's new website can be found at alecfinlay.com

For The Birds
Specimen Colony is a permanent public artwork and book, for the Bluecoat and Liverpool 08: European Capital of Culture. Six colourful colonies of nest-boxes colour specified from postage stamps of birds nestle in the trees around the gallery. These feature in the opening exhibition now then in the new galleries, until May 4. All thirty four nest-boxes are available as free downloadable card cut-outs.

Star-Diary
Alec is currently in residence at Kielder, where he is creating a series of permanent artist projects for the new Observatory, designed by Charles Barclay, which opens on April 25, 2008. These will include a 100 year star-diary, in collaboration with Professor ray Sharples and Denis Moskowitz (RRP £15.00), and a windmill turbine poem. A set of posters with star events and astronomical symbols are currently on display on billboards in the North of England (Glasgow, Carlisle, York, Newcastle). These are available as a limited edition of 5 A2 digital prints. An enamel badge produced for Kielder Astronomical Observatory Society is also now available, priced £7.50. The project is discussed in more detail in an interview between Alec and Tom Shakespeare.

w/m
For his residency at NaREC (New and Renewable Energy Centre, Blyth) Alec is developing a number of projects that focus on kinetic poetry and colour designs for turbines (in collaboration with Alexander Maris and Jack Lowe). Two animations, /w/m/ and sky-poems are now viewable; also a year long colour specification project composed from digital photographs of the sky, sky-wheel. This wheel refers to the day, week, month, season and year, with the final amalgamated year colour being completed on midsummer’s day 2008. The colour designs include schemes derived from camouflage. Other projects include photographs by Alexander Maris and a binaural field recording of a turbine by Susan Maris.

Essence Press recently published a collection of Alec’s short poems, a slower shower (island 16).